Innovation-Driven Development Strategy of Preschool Education in the Internet+ Era

Introduction

With the rapid development of information technology and the popularity of the Internet, preschool education faces new opportunities and challenges. This level of education is a pivotal stage of children's development, which is particularly important for children's physical and mental health and social adaptability (Xu, 2021). In today's society, the Internet has profoundly changed people's way of life and thinking, and it has also affected education (Jiao, 2016). The Internet Plus era has brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges to preschool education, which requires innovative thinking and methods to promote its development (Qu, 2021). Internet Plus is not just a technological concept. The new model of Internet Plus and preprimary education, which promote and advance each other, can solve the most basic problems of preprimary education such as resource constraints, educational fairness, educational personalization, and the exertion of the teachers' dominant position.

Society continuously evolves, and preschool education continues to face new opportunities and challenges (Kowalski, 2018). On the one hand, the rapid development of information technology and the Internet provides a broad development space for preschool education and more innovative opportunities for teaching, management, and service. On the other hand, preschool education faces many challenges such as insufficient educational resources and uneven educational quality. Therefore, the question of how to innovate thinking and methods to promote the development of preschool education is a hot issue in the field. It is found, however, that the scale of cost of preschool education in China has increased from 190 billion yuan in 2017 to 338 billion yuan in 2022 under the joint action of market demand and policy guidance. It is predicted that the cost will reach 373 billion yuan in 2023. The scale and forecast of preschool education in China from 2017 through 2023 are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Preschool education scale and forecast in China, 2017-2023

With the improvement of China's economy, and people's attention to education, more and more families are aware of the importance of preschool, thus increasing the demand. The government's policy support and supervision provide more development opportunities and resources for learning institutions. The government has introduced a series of supportive policies such as financial subsidies, tax incentives, etc., which have increased the economic benefits of these institutions, promoting market competition and expansion of scale. The bottleneck for the government to develop preschool education have been the issues of educational fairness due to regional and economic differences, the difficulty in achieving personalized education for preschool children due to the lack of screening means and corresponding resource guarantees, and the difficulty in exerting teacher autonomy and young children's subjectivity caused by the impact of traditional education models. The goal of high-quality and inclusive education for all seems far off.

Insufficient and uneven allocation of resources, differentiation in educational quality, and difficulty in achieving personalized education are challenges that need to be addressed, for they adversely affect the development of children's physical and mental health and social adaptability. In this paper, we aim to explore how to promote the innovation and development of preschool education in the context of the Internet Plus era. We elaborate on the theoretical basis of preschool education innovation, summarize the practical experience of innovation, and propose strategies and paths forward. This article serves as reference and inspiration for the practical innovation of preschool education through literature review and empirical research methods. We conduct research on the following aspects. We will analyze the current problems and reasons faced by preschool education; explore the significance, theoretical basis, and practical experience of innovation in preschool education. We then propose strategies and paths for preschool education innovation in the Internet Plus era including Internet-based teaching, management, and service innovation; promotion of education system reform, optimization of the allocation of educational resources, strengthening of the construction of teachers, and improving the quality of education and teaching.